Black Holes: The Edge of Space, The End of Time

I first read Walter Sullivan's book on black holes almost 25 years ago, when it first came out. Inspired by the Carl Sagan series 'Cosmos', I became fascinated as an adolescent with astronomy and physics. Sullivan's book was one of the early books I read because it is a fairly popular account, written with the general reader in mind, short on equations but full of information and ideas. Sullivan covers much of mid-twentieth-century astronomy in this text with broad strokes. he looks at the general idea of black holes as the end result of supermassive stars' evolutionary patterns. This also involves a discussion of modern physics ideas such as relativity and warped spacetime. Sullivan also explores the phenomena of quasars, cosmic background radiation, and various speculations about the nature and shape (and final fate) of the universe. Recently there have been announcements about Hawking's revision to his thinking about black holes. These ideas are not entirely new, even though they may be new to the public, and doubtless the details are new. The idea of evaporating black holes, white holes, and naked singularities are addressed here by Sullivan. Black holes don't necessarily trap everything for all time, and don't necessarily last forever. Hawking had originally thought that the evaporating radiation did not convey any information about what is inside the black hole -- it is on this point that his recent speculation has changed.Finally, Sullivan explores the nature of time, the idea that black holes may be far more common than previously thought (these ideas seem to have been superseded by theories of dark matter), and the challenge to future scientists to discover more and more about the darkest and most dense mystery around.Walter Sullivan was described as the Dean of American Science Writers. A journalist by profession, he spent many years as editor of the New York Times. He accompanied expeditions to Antarctica, and served as foreign correspondent in many parts of the world. He won the National Science Foundation's award for distinguished public service in 1978, after spending 20 years in writing about science topics.Sullivan's text is very readable (his journalistic background does him good service here), and the book is full of charts, graphs, and pictures (although direct photographic evidence of black holes is difficult to come by, then or now, so don't expect to see a picture here).

This book is an introduction to black holes. A black hole occurs when a star more massive than our sun, collapses in on itself and the sheer force of its gravity is enough to draw everything near it into it. Nothing escapes from a blackhole. Not even light. That's what I heard anyway. Black holeshave been around since the GTR. (That's General Theory ofRelativity.) They're known to destroy anything near them. If our sun was a supergiant like Betelgeuse, (pronounced "beetle juice,") it would end in a spectacular death. Probablyending up as either a quasar, which is a neutron star, or ablack hole. Scientists believe that there are black holes at the centers of galaxies. "May you live in interesting times."____Ancient Chinese curse.